Alexandru Ioniță and Stefan Tobler, eds. Orthodox Liturgy and Anti-Judaism

This expression of a serious extended investigation of a long and unsettled history, followed by expert and documented attention to the specificity of Orthodoxy and Orthodox Liturgy in respect to the Jewish faith, is also an honest investigation of the liturgical texts, documenting the perspective of the Orthodox Church on Judaism, in analyses predicated upon nuancing the Orthodox attitude toward Judaism, as undistorted as possible. The authors approach this delicate matter (the anti-Jewish liturgical inheritance), contributing to the current, informed, and open interconfessional dialogue.Structured in three parts, the volume opens with the study by Ruth Langer and Demetrios E. Tonias, approaching the interplay of otherness in the historical representations of Greek Orthodox and Jewish liturgies. Alexandru Mihăilă, in “Quoting Scripture against the Jews during the Holy Week in the Eastern Orthodox Church,” analyzes the notable anti-Judaic references (true conceptual “periscopes”) in the Byzantine liturgy during Holy Week. Sandrine Caneri discerns in Byzantine liturgical hymns the anti-Jewish elements in a complex analysis of liturgical texts interpretable as incitement to violence against Jews, a strange deviation from the general, generous message of the Gospel.Vadim Wittkowsky studies the anti-Jewish passages of the New Testament and of the earliest Christianity present in Christian liturgies. Pertinent research questions are posed: Is “the Jews” in 1 Thessalonians 2:14 really about the entire people of Israel? What kind of Jews were “children of the devil” according to John 8:44? Bogdan G. Bucur investigates the complexities of the striking anti-Jewish content and tone informed by exegeses that equate the kyrios (“Lord”) of Old Testament theophanies with the kyrios of Christian worship: Jesus Christ. The shockingly “indefensible and pastorally irresponsible statements are analyzed from this perspective.”The patristic authors and the scholarly interpreters in the field of Patristics should be in consonance. Basilius J. Groen’s study approaches the feature(s) of the Byzantine rite in venerating a sum of Old Testament saints, emphasizing that Christian identity and the joy about Jesus’ redeeming acts do not (cannot) imply the idea of God canceling His covenant with the Jews (p. 108).The second part treats post-Byzantine anti-Jewish texts as theological treatises with biased and less theological goals, not exactly biblical texts (Charalampos Minaoglou). Konstantinos M. Vapheiades’ interrogation addresses the superiority of the church, presenting the historical reality of the first few Christian centuries amidst the tides of anti-Jewish rhetoric, underlining the responsibility of both the Roman authorities and the Jewish leaders for Christ’s crucifixion, which went contrary to Christ’s earthly ministry. Next, Agnieszka Gronek focuses on two nineteenth-century Slovakian icons of the Passion of Christ. Presenting scenes of The Unjust Trial of Christ, a customary theme in the West but not in Byzantine art, Nadieszda Kizenko discusses this symbolic narrative surrounding Gavriil, a young Orthodox Christian boy killed in 1690 and venerated in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century.The third part begins with Stefanos Alexopoulos’ approach to a selection of the hymns from the Byzantine Holy Week, referencing Jewish people. The mentions of Jewish people are followed in the translations of the Greek writings (hymns) into English, investigating also the Greek-American context of this matter. Marian Pătru evaluates the ways in which the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) contributed to the anti-Semitic, homiletic, and nationalist discourse between the two World Wars. The permanence of antisemitism in the liturgical offices is studied by Ionuț Biliuță, accompanied by the praise of the self-sacrifice of the “saints” of the Communist prisons in post-1989 Romania. In a complementary view, Alina Pătru examines Christian Orthodox liturgical hymns as messages in liturgical communication, which is also investigated through the lenses of Umberto Eco’s theory of the three intentions of a literary text. Nowadays, such problematic content is especially striking, needing adjustment via more up-to-date theological education. Peter Ebenbauer emphasizes that in both the Byzantine and Roman Catholic rites, the so-called Improperia (a sum of antiphons and replies) are present in the liturgical texts of Holy and High Friday, in a ritual recalling of Christ’s suffering and death on Good Friday. These warnings from God or Christ are characterized by a whole series of biblical motifs linked to the scene of the crucifixion in an accusatory and dramatic way.Simona Ştefana Zetea’s study discerns between the theological level (at which RCU recognized and accepted post-Vatican II doctrines on Hebraism) and the practical level, at which the transposition of post-Vatican II doctrines on Hebraism in the concrete liturgy still lacks full actualization for lingering anti-Semitic elements. In conclusion, “the Greek Catholic Church’s liturgy cannot remain unchanged after the Shoah” (p. 290). Precisely this latter point captures the worth of such analyses, important for their role in nuancing and increasing mutual, interconfessional, and knowledgeable understanding.